THE JEWS IN EUROPE. 213 



Emperor Frederick II based thereupon the claim that all Jews were 

 his property as the Emperor, according to the then prevailing logic, 

 that the master's rights over them had been transmitted from the old 

 Roman emperors to him as their successor. His son, Conrad IV, al- 

 ready used the expressions, " servants of our chamber," and the Schioa- 

 benspiegel * professed to know that " King Titus had given them over 

 to be the property of the imperial chamber." King Albrecht de- 

 manded from King Philip of France that the French Jews be handed 

 over to him, and later the Jews themselves said, in a memorial to the 

 Council of Ratisbon, that " They belonged to the Emperor, in order 

 that he might preserve them from entire destruction at the hands of 

 the Christians, and keep them as a memorial of the sufferings of 

 Christ." 



After the fourteenth century, this servitude to the exchequer came 

 to be understood and applied as a complete slavery : " You belong," 

 says the Emperor Charles IV, in a document addressed to the Jews, 

 " to us and the empire with your lives and possessions ; we can order, 

 do, and act with these as we like and as seems good to us." In fact, the 

 Jews frequently went, like an article of merchandise, from one hand 

 into another ; the Emperor declared, now here, now there, that their 

 claims for the payment of debts were annulled, and caused a large 

 sum of money, generally thirty per cent, to be paid by the debtors 

 into his own treasury. 



The protection which emperor and empire were supposed to ac- 

 cord to the servants of the exchequer was often illusory, even when 

 they were granted special privileges ; as a matter of fact, they were 

 without civil rights. Only where self-interest dictated, not to allow 

 men in so many ways useful and profitable to utterly perish, did the 

 governments step in. Otherwise everybody's hand was against them, 

 from emperor down through all ranks of society to the very rabble. 

 Often protection was assured them only for a limited time, at the end 

 of which they were as good as outlawed, unless they immediately 

 bought with large sums of money a renewal of the letter of protection. 

 They were -used like sponges allowed to completely fill themselves, in 

 order to be then as completely squeezed out. What happened in the 

 year 1390 deserves to be kept in the memory of Germans as a con- 

 stant warning. King, princes, nobles, and cities were, by reason of 

 long wars, all alike in debt ; then the example that had been already 

 given by France was copied. At the Imperial Diet held in Nurem- 

 berg, all money-claims by Jews were annulled, and, instead of paying 

 their rightful creditors the debtors paid in fifteen per cent of their in- 

 debtedness to the royal treasury ! In this way, for example, the Duke 

 of Bavaria, the Count of Oettingen, and the city of Ratisbon, each 

 won one hundred thousand gold florins. 



If a prince ever showed a disposition to favor the Jews of his land 



* The book containing the statute- and feudal-laws of South Germany. Translator. 



